Morris S. Ogul died on April 6, 2008, after a lengthy illness finally succumbing to pneumonia. He was 76. After receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, Morry spent his entire career on the faculty of the political science department at the University of Pittsburgh, beginning in 1957 and became professor emeritus in 1998. He also served as chair of the department.
Born in Detroit on April 15, 1931, Morry received his BA from Wayne State University. He moonlighted then as a taxi driver. This aspect of Morry's biography assumed importance for colleagues and friends who were first-time passengers in his car and who were otherwise comforted by Morry's mild manners, caution, and meticulousness. Once behind the wheel of his car, however, they saw a different side of this very gentle and humble man as he drove with abandon through alleyways and back roads with the instincts of the taxi driver he had been.
I had the good fortune to have known Morry Ogul from a number of perspectives—as a student, a colleague for nearly 30 years, and a friend. He was an extraordinary teacher and mentor, a wonderful colleague, a terrific kibitzer and source of advice, and a valued friend. We traveled along related scholarly pathways that gave us much to talk about, and because of that we also found an opportunity to collaborate.
Morry's signature work Congress Oversees the Bureaucracy: Studies in Legislative Supervision pioneered in a systematic way the now flourishing literature on legislative oversight of the bureaucracy. His work was carefully crafted, wise in the ways of Congress, and the product of astute observation.
Morry also collaborated with another Pitt colleague, Bill Keefe, to produce a textbook on the legislative process—not merely Congress—The American Legislative Process: Congress and the States that had gone into 10 editions. It was noted by one reviewer of the book that it was an inconceivable idea brilliantly executed. Another quite remarkable aspect of the book was the partnership of the two authors—a kind of political science odd couple. Bill Keefe was the Oscar Madison of this duo; Morry Ogul, the Felix Unger. Bill's office (like mine) had generations of paper lying on his desk. Morry kept a can of EndDust nearby and only the day's business was to be found on his desk. His office was pristine and his style, if it could be called that, was utterly meticulous, precise, and understated.
Despite his quiet and unassuming ways, Morry Ogul was a major presence in the political science department at Pitt during his lengthy tenure there. He was a dedicated teacher at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. More than a teacher, he was a mentor to undergraduates and graduates alike. As one former graduate student put it, “Morry was like Mr. Rogers goes to political science.” One of his former undergraduate students said of him that in the classroom, he “challenged students to question themselves and to look at problems from different angles and to always dig deeper.” But he did this “in a very gentle and respectful way making students feel they had contributed something important to the discussion or made a very insightful comment. He would then turn the comment into something much better and then give the student full credit and thank him or her.”
Although Morry had a gentle and unassuming personal style, he had an incisive and analytic mind and an inner core of steel. He was a kind man but an unsentimental one. His classes were places where fashionable but vacuous ideas came to die. He insisted on disciplined and rigorous thinking but in a manner that students might better understand how to bring these tools to their own cognitive processes. Morry strived to have students understand political analysis and why it is that people and groups have different interests. He was committed to political analysis so as to enable students to understand the presence and legitimacy of political conflict and the natural diversity of interests in a pluralistic and representative political order. As part of his pedagogical credo, the classroom was never to be used to mount a soap box. He was dispassionate without being detached. In 1985, Morry was the recipient of a Chancellor's Distinguished Teaching Award. This award was especially gratifying because it demonstrated that a purposefully anti-charismatic professor could be recognized for the quality of his teaching. And like most professors, Morry could not stop teaching even while he was in ill health. His caretaker commented that she learned a lot about government from him.
As department chair, Morry took his duties very seriously but executed them with equanimity. He was superb at finding people's comfort zones, at the critical role of keeping confidences, at calming the nerves of those with high anxiety, and at subtly deflating those with egos beyond their accomplishments. He was calm, competent, and civilized.
In the days before e-mail and text messaging when people actually had to talk to one another, Morry was the go-to colleague for everything from professional interests and advice to consumer decisions. When you wanted the low-down on what-to-buy or not-to-buy, Morry had researched the matter every which way. He was Consumer Reports without the subscription fee. This was not an easy matter in pre-Internet days. Of course, Morry's research on consumables, however thoroughly performed, was not always infallible. A colleague who had placed great faith in Morry's “consumer reports” and who was in the market for a car followed his seemingly authoritative advice every step of the way and purchased the car that Morry recommended. He came to conclude that it was the worst consumer mistake he had ever made. Morry probably would have drawn the conclusion that all expectations must be empirically tested.
Morry saw through pretense and malarkey more than most of us. He was skeptical of self-advertisers and catch phrases. He delighted in puncturing holes in PR flack and advertising—whether in academia or the commercial world. He was fond of sending up the advertisement of a now long defunct, if improbably named, discount appliance store in Pittsburgh, Kelly and Cohen, which claimed that “we lose money on every sale but make up for it in volume.” Morry was dedicated to the proposition that not only should we not fall for that line in our purchases but we also should be skeptical of its equivalents in politics.
Morry was both an intensely private person yet very sociable. He enjoyed interacting with colleagues, friends, and students. He never advertised his many merits or wished to have them advertised by others on his behalf. He was a throwback to the days before academic brag sheets came into style. Even in death, Morry wished to have no funeral or memorial services. The departmental colleagues, former students, and others from Pitt who had known Morry well during his career dutifully disobeyed his desire to have nothing said of him. Fortunately, two of Morry's colleagues at Pitt, Jon Hurwitz and Ronald Linden, thought it best to organize a remembrance event on April 28 that, like Morry himself, was full of kindness, humor, and dignity. One of Morry's nieces observed that he was “a modest man” who “would never toot his own horn.” It was, nonetheless, comforting to those of us who knew and appreciated him to toot it for him knowing full well that he would have disapproved.
Morry was predeceased by his wife, Eleanor. He leaves behind two nephews and two nieces and three grand-nephews and two grand-nieces. Contributions may be made in Morris Ogul's memory to the Dr. Morris S. & Eleanor S. Ogul Fund c/o The University of Pittsburgh, Office of Institutional Advancement, 200 South Craig Street, 500 Craig Hall, Pittsburgh, PA 15260.
